What Can Groundwater Monitoring Tell Us About Gas Migration? A Numerical Modeling Study

Groundwater monitoring to measure a variety of indicator parameters including dissolved gas concentrations, total dissolved gas pressure (TDGP), and redox indicators is commonly used to evaluate the impacts of gas migration (GM) from energy development in shallow aquifer systems. However, these parameters can be challenging to interpret due to complex free-phase gas source architecture, multicomponent partitioning, and biogeochemical reactions. A series of numerical simulations using a gas flow model and a reactive transport model were conducted to delineate the anticipated evolution of indicator parameters following GM in an aquifer under a variety of physical and biogeochemical conditions. The simulations illustrate how multicomponent mass transfer processes and biogeochemical reactions create unexpected spatial and temporal variations in several analytes. The results indicate that care must be taken when interpreting measured indicator parameters including dissolved hydrocarbon concentrations and TDGP, as the presence of dissolved gases in background groundwater and biogeochemical processes can cause potentially misleading conclusions about the impact of GM. Based on the consideration of multicomponent gas partitioning in this study, it is suggested that dissolved background gases such as N₂ and Ar can provide valuable insights on the presence, longevity and fate of free-phase natural gas in aquifer systems. Overall, these results contribute to developing a better understanding of indicators for GM in groundwater, which will aid the planning of future monitoring networks and subsequent data interpretation.